does fab 2017 only work in AuotCAD MEP 2017?

[Anonymous]

I'm looking to AutoCAD products to make fabrication sheets for piping spools. My customer requires AutoCAD MEP 2014, I can purchase 2018 on the website which will work fine for designing and save the file back to 2014. For fabrication sheets for our shop, I was looking to add on Fabrication but it's Fab 2017 and won't open in my 2018 MEP. I tried to add the app in appload but I get an "unable to load" in the dialog box. Am I doing something wrong in the installation?

[jonathan_moreno]

Hi Emil,

Thank you for your post.  Please review this link: How to load Fabrication CADmep within AutoCAD 

Note: Fabrication CADmep 2017 requires AutoCAD 2017 or an AutoCAD 2017-based product.

If you installed Fabrication CADmep, it is important to understand that it is possible to run AutoCAD without running Fabrication CADmep. If you installed Fabrication CADmep after installing AutoCAD, the Fabrication CADmep installation creates a desktop shortcut icon that automatically loads the Fabrication CADmep .arx file whenever Fabrication CADmep is launched from that shortcut. If you launch AutoCAD on its own, then you must use the APPLOAD command to load the Fabrication CADmep .arx file, and thereby launch Fabrication CADmep.

Fabrication CADmep does not display any user interface components in the AutoCAD ribbon. However, when Fabrication CADmep is successfully loaded, the following user interface components are visible within the AutoCAD application window:

• CADmep Service palette
• CADmep toolbar
• CADmep right-click menus.

For more information, see Introduction to CADmep.

Please keep us posted and let us know how this worked out or if there are any questions.  Thank you and we look forward to your reply update. 

[Anonymous]

I'll have to wait until Fabrication 2018 comes out to try this out, since I have MEP 2018 and AutoCAD 2016. 

Thanks for the help, though.

[jonathan_moreno]

2018 version of the Fabrication software it's available for download via the following.

Launch the Autodesk Desktop App.

Start > All Applications > Autodesk > Autodesk Desktop App

Log into your Autodesk account by clicking Sign In at the top right of the screen.

Click the "My Products" Tab.

All your currently owned Autodesk software will be listed here.

If the 2018 version of your software has been released it will be listed as available for install.

Click the check box for the terms of service then click install.

Please keep us posted and let us know how this worked out or if there are any questions.  Thank you and we look forward to your reply update.